Josh’s Blog – August 2013

We are now in August which means the half way point of the F1 season in which Sebastian Vettel holds a strong 38 point lead over his rivals. The battle behind him in the championship is very close with Raikkonen, Alonso and Hamilton separated by only 10 points with 9 races to go.

The next race is the Belgium GP at the legendary Spa circuit but we will have to wait until the end of August for that.

Since my last blog we have had 3 F1 events. Firstly the mid-season driver test allowed teams to test the cars, the new tyre structure and potential new drivers for the future. The main headline that came from that was the impressive performance of Susie Wolff who drove the Williams to 9th place in day three of the test.

We then had the German GP that was won by Vettel whilst the last race before the 3 week factory shut down was in Hungary and was the first race win of the season for Lewis Hamilton in his Mercedes. It seemed that the car that has been so well known for its ability to quickly destroy rear tyres in races showed no signs of the trait as Hamilton controlled the race from lights to flag which bodes well for the rest of the season. Romain Grosjean was once again in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons for numerous risky overtakes and collisions which overshadowed the great pace that he had shown all weekend, clearly a driver with great raw pace, however, he needs to quickly learn from his mistakes before someone else takes his seat in the Lotus.

In my last blog, I also discussed the Formula Student 2013 competition which was convincingly won by the ETH Zurich Team whilst the highest placed University from Britain was Huddersfield in 15th place. The event as ever was very popular with 84 teams taking part in the event, exhibiting a range of technologies and interesting designs.

Being half way through the summer holidays now, the countdown is on for the start of the next academic year with students starting back in September. As a student, you should have by now had a good break and enjoyed the nice weather we have had during July. My advice now would be to begin gearing up for your next year in education and ensure you are prepared for the year ahead. This may mean polishing up on your referencing methods and assignment structure, revising for exam resits or purchasing new reading material whilst reviewing last years notes.